<b>Pre-puberty castration effect on equine body development</b> - DOI: 10.4025/actascianimsci.v26i2.1883

Abstract

Aiming to evaluate the effect of pre-puberty castration on traction horses' body development, the experiment was carried out with 18 cross breeding Mangalarga foals. The animals belonged to the same stallion offspring and were castrated at 2 months old. The following characteristics were measured at ages 2, 12 and 24 months: the hights of withers, back chine, hook, ribs and chest floor, the lengths of body and rump, the widths of thurl, hook and chest and the perimeters of limbs and thorax. Besides, loading, capacity, body, morphological, chest and dactyl-thorax indexes were also measured. The results showed that there were not significant differences between castrated and non-castrated animals for almost all measured characteristics. However, castrated horses had greater liveweight, thorax perimeter and index capacity than non-castrated animals. Thus, it was concluded that pre-puberty castration is feasible.